1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a management apparatus and a management method and is suited for use in a management server for managing resources in, for example, a computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
One of conventional ways of operating a computer system is to manage computer resources such as servers and storage units (hereinafter simply referred to as the “resource(s)”) as a pool, use a desired resource from among the resources belonging to the pool whenever necessary, and then return the resource to the pool when it is no longer needed.
In the above-described operation, a user reports requirements for the performance of resources such as the operating frequency of a CPU (Central Processing Unit), the capacity of memory installed, and the storage capacity (hereinafter referred to as the “performance requirements”) to an administrator of the resources (hereinafter referred to as the “resource administrator”).
The resource administrator who has received the above report selects a resource that satisfies the performance requirements, from the pool and allocates that resource to the user. As a result, the user uses the resource allocated by the resource administrator.
Incidentally, Japanese Patent Laid-Open (Kokai) Application Publication No. 2006-309691 discloses, regarding a system for pooling computers, to which no business application is allocated, and adding a pooled computer to a business application with insufficient resources, a technique of managing a specification of each computer, managing, for each business application, the relationship between the specification of the relevant computer and the number of processed requests when the relevant business application is operated using the above specification, and deciding a computer to be added to the business application with insufficient resources based on the above-mentioned information.
In normal computer systems, the quality of pooled resources (for example, functions installed in the resources) is often inhomogeneous. If a resource to be allocated to a user is decided based on the performance requirements (such as specifications) provided by the user as in the conventional art in the above-described circumstances, the resource that satisfies the user's intended purpose of use may sometimes not be provided.
Specifically speaking, a possible situation that may take place is that although the user intends to operate an important application, if the resource allocated by the resource administrator does not have an availability enhancing function, processing executed by the important application cannot be continued, for example, when a resource failure occurs.
The same thing can be said about the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open (Kokai) Publication No 2006-309691.